Profile of Graduates

Class of 2014

After graduation in May 2014, Anavictoria returned to Southern California to provide post-surgery recovery care for her mother. She also worked with several community organizations to develop pilot projects for training Anaheim’s youth in civic awareness and engagement. With the many policy and political changes occurring in the City of Anaheim, Anavictoria wanted to support her community’s youth throughout summer projects so that their voices and concerns influence current policy discussions. Anavictoria is currently a 2L at Northwestern School of Law, where she hopes to build from the substantive and practical foundation that her American Studies Major provided for serving and advocating for her community.

After a series of trial-and-error attempts to start a career in fashion retail and marketing, Shabnam Banerjee-McFarland did a 180 turn and channeled her energy into working with non-profits and learning more about the importance of disseminating change-making policy in all popular culture channels. Since January 2015, she has been working in book marketing with Berrett-Koehler Publishers, a mission-based publishing company in Oakland, CA that publishes books on social justice, conscious capitalism, and self-help in order to "Create a World That Works For All." Most recently, she is designing an extensive research program to confront the extreme lack of diversity in publishing, in hopes of elevating voices from communities that are underrepresented in the industry. A true SF native through and through, Shabnam continues to fight to maintain the colorful vibrancy of San Francisco & Oakland by writing for her personal blog and the Berrett-Koehler blog.

Immediately following graduation, Sonja moved from Berkeley to Los Angeles and began working as an administrator at a small independent elementary school. For two years, she led the after school enrichment program and managed the school’s internal and external communications. Sonja’s duties increasingly involved working in the admissions office, assisting with prospective parent communications, event coordination, and the collection of admissions data and materials. Beginning in July 2016, she transitioned from the enrichment coordinator position to the full-time admissions and communications assistant. Sonja is currently applying to graduate programs in library science and archival studies.

Patty spent the summer after graduation studying for the LSAT and working. She assisted a lawyer doing every day tasks, such as preparing documents to file in court and maintaining an organized electronic and physical copy of all documents to ensure accurate filing of all documents that relate to the cases the firm worked on. She is currently a 2L at UCLA School of Law.

After graduating, Sophia Ng worked at Kickstarter in New York City as an Integrity Analyst. She also served as a Board Member for the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum*New York City (NAPAWF*NYC) chapter, where she volunteered her time working on reproductive justice, immigrant rights, and worker advocacy issues. Sophia is currently a Fulbright Teaching Assistant, teaching English at a secondary school in Gopeng, Perak in Malaysia.